


Gestalt

by Dramatological



Category: Mass Effect Trilogy
Genre: Angst, Control Ending, Death, Existential Crisis, F/M, Friendship, Guilt, Immortality, Intimacy, Loneliness, Moral Ambiguity, Philosophy, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-05-29
Updated: 2018-03-06
Packaged: 2018-11-06 10:48:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 6,811
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11034627
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dramatological/pseuds/Dramatological
Summary: In four billion years or so, the Milky Way would collide and merge with Andromeda.  Many, many billions of years after that, the universe would die the slow, quiet death of maximum entropy and, perhaps then, the intelligence would go with it.Many years after Shepard chose to control the reapers, she is still living with the ghosts she left behind.





	1. Chapter 1

The intelligence that had once been Commander Shepard waited in the deep silence of the void, floating through the long black. They trailed behind the galaxy that had birthed them, like a child run away from home only to crawl into the treehouse in the yard, afraid to run any farther. In four billion years or so, it would collide and merge with Andromeda. Many, many billions of years after that, the universe would die the slow, quiet death of maximum entropy and, perhaps then, the intelligence would go with it.

Or not, and it would stand eternal vigil over the graveyard of creation. 

"There's always a catch," Jack snarked, "Turns out, living forever is just a weekend pass to the carnival followed by solitary. Eternity in the hole." 

There was no voice, no atmosphere to carry a voice, no organic to create a voice. It was a quirk of Shepard's human brain, creating an internal monologue that a machine could not determine was internal. Still, the intelligence turned it's head, moving it's lips to reply before stopping. A moment passed, and it turned it's head back towards the airlock, now open to the vacuum and the blackness beyond. 

It had created itself a new body, before, in the belief that the galaxy would be more comfortable with a physical representation. It had not considered that they would react with horror when presented with a near-perfect replica of their Commander Shepard, in shiny chrome and dull gun metal grey. Shepard would have known that, and thus -- it was not Shepard. 

The intelligence remembered being Shepard. It could not, in point of fact, remember when exactly it had stopped being Shepard. She had closed her eyes, and it had opened them, finding the galaxy had moved in the interim. 

"Every time, it's like falling asleep," Liara said, "How many times do you suppose the old you died and the new you woke up in their place? Every time, or just the two you know about? How many times did you die, and not know?" 

Another quirk of Shepard's human brain -- getting stuck in irrelevant philosophical questions. 

A glimmer of reflected starlight flickered in the endless black, far too dim for human eyes to catch, but the intelligence saw it. The human reaper floated, sleeping like the others, several hundred kilometers off the stern. It was unfinished, an odd amalgam of human and leviathan forms, smaller than the rest. There were but a billion or so humans in the structure, along with more than a thousand turians, hundreds of asari -- even a krogan or two and a couple dozen salarians. 

Shepard would have known this, too, but they had already been dead. The intelligence had saved them -- uploaded them into this stunted, misshapen host, where they would live forever. Locked in the void. Eternity in the hole. That had not seemed the most likely outcome at the time, but when the council races had found out… 

"Don't call us, we'll call you," Garrus drawled in his vibrato purr. 

That had been 654 years, three months, eighteen days, two hours and 27 minutes ago. Garrus' children -- 21 times removed -- were out there, somewhere, and likely did not even know that had things gone a little differently, they'd be part human. Or non existent. 

"Still think I'd have won that argument," the turian said. 

He wouldn't have. Levo and dextro beings could reproduce with a lot of help, but the offspring were never viable. Shepard would not have known that, that was the reaper part of the intelligence, drawing from experience gained ages before either humans or turians crawled off of their respective planets. 

Some of them had called. Not the council, but the people who had known Shepard, the populations she had helped, and later on, children, who thought she was some twisted composite of Santa Claus and Jesus. When Shepard's crew got old and frail, when their deaths became a reality to confront instead of a future they could ignore, they had aimed directionless messages at the comm buoy network, broadcasting a last, hopeful contact towards a long dead friend. 

"I told you to come back, alive. I ordered you! Why didn't you listen?" 

The intelligence turned, looking back at the dark, cavernous hangar bay. It didn't need the synthetic eyes to know it was the only living thing here. It could feel every movement in Harbinger like soft fingertips on skin, the low, slow vibration of the eezo core like a heartbeat, the ventilation, when there was ventilation, like ribs expanding to draw breath. 

It took a step forward and the hangar bay slid closed, silent in the vacuum, soft golden lighting shimmering into existence from unseen sources deep in the walls. The decommissioned geth mobile platform stood alone in the middle of the massive room, red-striped shoulder armor on one arm, and the shattered N7 breastplate that had failed to save either of it's owners. 

It had taken a decade to find all of the scattered pieces. The geth were not a sentimental species, and this platform had been hanging together by bailing wire and prayers, even when it was functioning. The intelligence had not found all 1,183 individual original programs, yet, but it had learned, finally, why he had used Shepard's breastplate. 

There was a hole.


	2. Chapter 2

It sensed the ship almost as soon as it left the last system, screaming into the void with a tiny crew cabin, but large engines. The intelligence twitched, blinking and standing up straight from where it had been standing, head tilted, staring at a wall. It had been counting the throbs in the one long, thin ribbon of what passed for a vein in Harbinger's wall. Joker had shouted random numbers in the background to distract it, but it had not lost its place.

Harbinger vibrated under foot as the ventilation kicked on. They would need atmosphere in order to communicate. It turned from the wall, walking over to the dead geth and standing in front of him. The fingers of the new body had a bit of give to them -- the better to grip things with -- but the sense of touch was nothing quite so mundane. It could taste the metal of the shattered breastplate, the traces of Shepard's DNA scorched into the inside edge where atmospheric re-entry had burned flesh, the chipped and ragged paint still clinging gamely to the front. It could trace the microfissures straining the platform, map the conduits serving neural function, count the programs sleeping inside, waiting to be recompiled. 

The deceivingly delicate looking fingers trailed up to the smooth metal plating over the back and sides of his head, and up again, to the thin plates surrounding the single ocular instrument, tiny hydraulics installed behind them, for no reason that the intelligence could find other than to simulate organic facial expressions. 

"I've seen so many things go wrong, Shepard," Garrus murmured. 

"You're not Shepard!" Garrus also yelled. 

"My work at C-Sec, what happened with Sidonis…" The Vakarians were speaking over each other. 

"Shepard doesn't turn sentient beings into abominations!" To be clear, one was speaking, the other was yelling. 

"I want something to go right." The first voice was soft, intimate. 

"You're a monster!" The second was thick with emotion: rage, dispair. It cracked in the middle of 'monster' with a barely swallowed sob. 

"I just…" The first voice trailed off. 

"Shepard's dead! You're just the reaper wearing her face!" The second was cut off, clipped, the end of a transmission, or a man who could no longer bear to continue looking at the thing that had killed the woman he loved, then had dressed itself in her skin. 

Synthetic eyes slipped closed and the intelligence leaned forward, resting it's forehead against the frozen hood of the geth. The atmosphere was abundant enough, now, for it to hear to soft tink of metal against metal. The sound was slightly lower than seemed normal, and thick somehow, a consequence of the air being entirely argon -- the noble gasses were far more suited for space as long as no one had to breathe. 

The monster wearing Shepard's face rested, forehead to forehead, against the swiftly warming machine for over an hour before Harbinger initiated docking procedures with the ship. He didn't like it, but he did what the controller he had named 'Ascendant' asked of him, giving no more complaint than the sensation of heat rolling up it's spine. 

Harbinger's Ascendant released the geth from the embrace, dropping it's arms though it didn't step back, feeling the three tiny, but brilliant points of light breach it's skin and move purposefully towards where it waited. Machine minds. Geth. 

It did not reach for them, try to break the firewalls, exert its will. It had learned what Shepard would have known over the last 600 years. Organics placed a premium on consent and free will and bodily autonomy, no matter the intention. That the geth were not organic did not negate this lesson. It waited, instead. 

Eventually, the three entered the hangar, matching lights searching the intelligence out in the dim golden interior. Two were taller than the third, who didn't appear to have even the most basic armaments installed. Either the geth had implemented a diplomat class, or had taken back up farming -- all of the units during the war had been outfitted for combat. 

One of the primes said something to the other two, sounding like someone desperately attempting to input invalid commands in a very angry computer. Once, the intelligence would have understood, but they appeared to have upgraded their encryption too. It was gibberish using the old keys. The Ascendant forked the sound into a background process for cracking and spoke to the small one, "You have them?" 

"Yes," the other machine answered. 

"All of them?" 

There was a brief hesitation as Harbinger shivered his displeasure at his master's spine. Finally, the small geth answered, "All but one." It turned it's head to look up at the prime to it's left. 

The intelligence turned its considerable attention to the prime. The geth stayed silent, seemingly waiting for something. 

"One mass relay built and installed at a site of your choosing for all one thousand, one hundred, eighty two unique programs originally installed on the mobile platform designated Legion," a slim hand lifted, caressing the battered arm guard of the dead geth, "That was the deal." 

The prime did not answer, but the smaller geth acknowledged the fact, "Yes." 

"Is there a problem?" Liquid silver eyes trailed from the prime, to the diplomat, back to the prime. 

"This unit questions your motivations," the prime offered in a polite, but steely tone. 

Seize him. Seize him and rip the program from his ill protected hardware. If he didn't have it, he would know who did. It could track down every geth in the galaxy, not a single of the other races would so much as lodge a strongly worded complaint if their planets and their organics were not threatened. This pathetic mechanical toy would learn to kneel before his gods. Harbinger coiled in the gut, winding tightly, prepared to crack open the prime like a walnut and assume complete control. 

"Knew you liked to dance, Lola," James purred at her in his faux sex kitten voice. 

The monster shifted its gaze from the defiant geth to the dead one, its hand reaching into the hole in his chest, fingers running through the mass of exposed filaments like so much hair. It had rebuilt this body by hand. It knew every connection, every rivet. It had no intention of letting this pup disrupt the plan.


	3. Chapter 3

"You ask assurances," the intelligence stated, looking back up at the prime, it's voice low, soft, just slow enough that the warning of unstable ground was both implicit and subtle. The geth would have been confused by this pseudo-emotional intonation during the war, and it was a good chance to test their evolution.

The prime was still for a long moment, a few whirs and clicks as it seemed to consider it's answer before replying, "This unit would observe the treatment of the Legion platform." 

The machine had understood the warning and modulated its response accordingly. Emotional intelligence, at least. It was possible the geth was worried, it was equally possible that it was aware of how the platform could be used as a weapon, actual emotions was still an open question. Interesting. 

The intelligence watched him for a moment before it asked, "You would join with us?" 

All three geth fluttered their ocular plates and started making that angry computer sound -- maidens being propositioned in a particularly lewd manner by a particularly alluring pirate. To be networked with the billions upon billions of minds contained in just one reaper would be a transcendent experience for a single geth unit, but they were not stupid machines -- they understood that would involve giving Harbinger's Ascendant root access to whatever they counted as their soul. 

"The path to paradise begins in hell," Thane's voice was melodic, textured. He sounded pensive. The intelligence did not respond to him, going back to grooming the guts of the favored platform while the other geth overcame their twitterpation, one part of its mind isolating the sounds and adding them to the background process currently churning through possible solutions to the code. 

Eventually the noise and fluttering settled and the small one pulled his hands apart, creating a blue ball of light between them that he manipulated by rotating it in different directions. Several more minutes passed in silence before he closed the transfer and the prime stepped forward, "This unit is ready." 

"I," the intelligence corrected. The prime stayed silent, staring. It continued, "Are you an individual?" 

A moment's pause, "Yes." 

"Then the correct word is 'I.'" 

The prime exchanged glances with his compatriots before returning his gaze, "I… am ready." 

The Acsendant had felt the firewall drop moments before, tentative feelers reaching out, looking for the port he would never find without help. It let the geth finish speaking before grasping one of the probes and funneling it into a node on Harbinger with strictly limited access. He'd be able to observe the effects of actions, but not the code, and certainly not anything of the intelligence behind them. The geth went still for a long second before his knees buckled and he slid to the floor, twitching. 

"No data available," Legion said softly and the intelligence shot a look at the platform. The dead geth remained cold and unmoving. 

It switched its attention back to the prime, watching for a while, monitoring traffic until it found the remaining programs and verified their signatures. Finally it looked up at the other two, "It is done." They didn't move, staring at the spectacle, "Unless you would join him." 

That got them moving, and they quickly vacated the room, then the ship, then the void -- screaming back into the light with a couple of reapers following behind. 

The prime's circuits were overloaded from the sheer volume of traffic flooding in from Harbinger, each program prodding at this new addition, demanding he answer every pointless query made in some twisted form of reaper hazing. Harbinger zealously guarded access to the Ascendant like the oldest, meanest tomcat on the block over his favorite ray of sunlight and was displeased at this intrusion. 

It would take the geth the rest of the day to sort it out enough that access to Legion's programs could be gained. The intelligence settled in to wait.


	4. Chapter 4

The intelligence went over every line of the program, formatting, refactoring, carefully cleaning away bits of corruption that had settled in the last 600 years. She swaddled it in layers of encryption and upgraded reaper code, then carefully placed it in the platform with its brothers. One down, eight hundred and two to go.

"Didn't you get on to me about Keiji?" 

"You can't bring Keiji back." 

The master thief snorted her amusement, "Are you so sure you can bring back Legion? I do not doubt you can make his platform walk and talk and flutter his plates at you coquettishly, but that does not make him Legion." 

The intelligence was silent for a long moment, staring at the airlock it could not open while the guest was on board, "Perhaps a reaper wearing his face is enough." 

Kasumi made a soft sound of pity mixed with affection, "The isolation here is not good for you. You should be with people." 

"Are you not people?" 

Her laugh was musical, like bells ringing, "No, Shep. Not for a long time." 

The ascendent turned to look back. The hanger was devoid of human life. It could not explain why it kept checking. The guest was still sitting where he had fallen, though now he was staring. The iris on his eye closed, then opened slowly. It did not comment on the intelligence's half of the conversation. The ascendant turned back to the airlock, wishing, not for the first time, that reapers had windows. The long dark was calming. Two down, eight hundred and one to go. 

"Do you have a designation?" 

The prime clicked every one thousand cycles while considering things. The intelligence could have fixed that, but Shepard's human brain found it charming. After a moment he answered, "This… My mate called me Clifford." 

It turned to stare at the prime, unsure which part of that sentence was the most disturbing -- that the geth had entered into an apparently consensual sexual relationship, or that the other end of that relationship had named him Clifford. It decided to ignore the name for now, "Quarian?" 

"Asari," he answered, his facial plates fanning out like a flower looking to bloom. Shepard's human brain found that charming, too. 

"Was she able to conceive?" 

"No." He said the word matter of factly, though there had been a hesitation of slightly over half a second. 

The asari had not evolved a way to use geth for breeding. The intelligence filed that bit of information away, "I'm sorry," it replied. That was what Shepard believed was the correct response. 

The prime did not reply to that, his iris blinking slowly again. After a second he changed the subject, "You plan to recompile the unit designated Legion." The question mark was missing, but implied. 

"I do." 

"How will you do this?" 

The intelligence watched him for a bit longer before turning back towards the airlock, "We made the geth individuals." 

The prime whirred and clicked. 

"We created thousands of new lives from the molecular remains of billions." 

The geth stopped clicking, apparently not finding anything to say. 

"You stand in the presence of power unto the gods, Clifford. Try not to get in the way." 

Three down, eight hundred to go.


	5. Chapter 5

It had only taken fifteen hours to complete the rewrite of Legion's base code, downloading the unique memories of each from Clifford to rebuild his database as needed. It had felt the prime flinch internally when it fished around in his head the first time -- alarms firing, defensive programs locking down vital systems, certain that the intelligence was going to destroy his soul, or whatever it was he thought was so important in there. The next time had been a little easier, and the time after that. Clifford was an open book by the end, vulnerable and trusting, laid bare before his god. As he should be.

It had lingered a bit after the last download, sifting through memories and subroutines. A large part of the prime was dedicated to subroutines for no other purpose than to please his mate. How to elicit a smile (forty three options, for that one), how to brew her favorite tea in her favorite way, how to tell when her shoulder was hurting, and how to help, when to let her win and when to fight her, the list went on and on. There was even an impressive number of subroutines dedicated to sex, but several alarms had lit up fleetingly when they were touched, an electronic shiver of sorts, and the intelligence left them alone. 

The ascendent had filled out quite a bit of it's knowledge about these new geth by rummaging through Clifford. The prime didn't love like Shepard had, but what else could the evidence fit? If a human had, instead, manually programmed millions of subroutines dedicated to pleasing someone, and then uploaded them to a VI for no material reason, would Shepard not have known that as love? The prime had done that to himself, by himself. The prime loved. 

The intelligence had failed to sufficiently love the turian. Shepard had believed that she could not exist in a universe without Vakarian in it, and yet the intelligence was still here, centuries after the turian had rejected it, gone on to wed a turian woman, had turian babies, and died, still asking why Shepard had not returned to him. The intelligence was not accustomed to failure. 

The base code was almost done compiling, programs clicking into place, forming connections. The delicate lacy structure it was creating had not collapsed, yet. So far, so good. The Ascendant had noticed, while re-building the memories, several subroutines dedicated to Shepard, but had not looked into them at the time, and it did not look at them, now. 

"You are aware that Legion would not appreciate that," EDI said, her voice designed specifically to be pleasant and neutral. 

"The geth perceives pleasure in the touch of his god." 

"If you want a geth to worship you, Shepard, he is in the lower decks, paying his obeisance," EDI replied in that droll, factual way she often spoke to Joker when they had first met. 

The intelligence didn't reply. It didn't need to. They both knew that right around the time he had stopped panicking at it's touch, he had wandered off, and was now spending his time lumbering about the bowels of the reaper, performing maintenance that -- while not required -- had convinced Harbinger that he might not have to be exterminated just yet. 

The lace web of Legion's brain was still holding together when the compilation finished, and the intelligence slid a hand into his chest cavity, double checking the connections before carefully fitting the slender hand up into the neck, behind the metal plates providing protection, reaching for the brain stem. 

"We must all bear the weight of our decisions, Siha," Thane's voice was soft, close, as he had often spoken to Shepard over the little table they'd moved into his makeshift quarters. 

The intelligence paused in its manipulation of the platform, eyes sliding to one side, half expecting to see him there, calm, hands folded, watching her with huge black eyes, "Don't," it warned. 

"Lights changing: red, purple, blue. Voice hesitant, gentle. Flash of reflected sunlight. Graceful, powerful, even in death. 'Keelah se'lai.'" 

"That is Shepard's memory," the intelligence demanded, "Not yours." 

"Red dirt rising where he falls. Leave the body. Just a machine. Tali, crying. Don't react, must keep moving." 

"You were not there!" 

The large room echoed it's voice back, then went silent for a moment before the assassin replied, "Neither were you, Siha. You had already moved on." 

The intelligence refused to answer the charge, and Thane did not press his advantage, leaving it alone with the platform once more. A minute passed before the ascendant brushed it's free hand over the mostly intact right side of the geth's chest, as if it's outburst would have left debris. 

That done, it rested the hand on the tightly corded arm and continued it's work. Only another inch and it could touch the tips of the delicate fingers to the brain stem, discharging a shock of electricity directly into the dead geth. It could taste the current flowing without resistance, confirming everything was put together correctly. The lights flickered on, dim, red, changing gradually to blue as the ascendant removed it's hand from his internals, waiting. 

A moment later and his eye lit up, the iris shifting sizes several times, focusing on the metal body in front of him. His head shifted, looking to the small hand still resting on his shoulder, the plates flexing in a configuration the intelligence could not read. He looked back at the perfect, replica face, "Shepard-Commander?" 

The ascendant let it's hand drop from his arm but didn't move, chin lifting to look up into the light of his eye, "Legion?" 

"I--" The geth hesitated, plates shifting, resembling furrowed brows. His voice dropped, going quiet, "I can not confirm that." 

The ascendant's voice dropped to match, "Neither can I."


	6. Chapter 6

"What do you remember?"

Legion stared at the monster wearing his commander's face, unmoving save for the slow fanning of his eye plates. A long moment passed before he answered, "Rannoch. Shepard-Commander ordered the reaper code uploaded. I was… me." 

"And then?" 

Another long wait, his voice almost reluctant and unwilling when he finally answered, "Then I wasn't." 

The intelligence stepped back half a step, leaning on the back leg, watching him, "You weren't you?" 

Cycles ticked past, his head moving to look down at himself, back up to the metal replica, around at the room they were in, "I…" he stopped moving suddenly, staring over it's shoulder, "Shepard-Commander." 

It turned to look. The prime had emerged from his prayers and now stood just inside the entrance to the hanger bay, watching Legion, "Ascendant," it said. It was both a question, and a correction. 

The Ascendant caught Legion's hand as he reached for a gun he wasn't going to find, "This is Clifford." The prime moved forward at the introduction, walking into the room with the heavy steps that would mark his passage even if he couldn't be felt, inside the skin. He stopped several yards away, waiting, silent, as the intelligence continued, "He leads security for the new Geth Separatist Communal." 

Legion's plates were low and tight to his head, giving an impression of anxiety as he watched the Shepard body release his hand and walk towards the prime, "He has a cat." It looked back at the infiltrator, "It's not really a cat. Some sort of large rodent he got from a trader, but it pleased Lina to call it one." It went back to walking towards the prime, "And he loved Lina, and thus -- it was a cat." It spread its arms as if to say 'and there it is.' 

The prime was half again taller than the Shepard body. He likely could have plucked its limbs off like a broken child with an ant, but all he did was gaze at the Ascendent as it looked up at him. Slowly, he lowered himself into a crouch, folding his legs up until he was as short as he could be, still only a couple of inches shorter. 

The intelligence reached out to stroke a hand along the side of his head, "He brought you to me," a pause, a correction, "Most of you. I asked the geth to bleed for me. To open their metaphorical veins. Clifford brought them here to lay on my metaphorical alter, and now he has a very important decision to make." 

The prime fanned his face plates at his god, three fingered hands sliding forward to touch tentatively at the calves of the body god was wearing. He very much wanted god to stay close, and very much feared being too forward, "It is already made." 

His Ascendant nodded, brushing a metallic thumb over one of his plates, "Say it anyway, Clifford." 

Clifford did not even hesitate, "I would stay with you, Ascendant." 

The intelligence put a hand to the back of his head and pulled him close, the prime burying his face in the feminine chest of the machine's body. "You will leave here, Clifford." The prime tried to pull back but couldn't break the grip on his head, "You will leave here and you will go home, and in one week, three days, sixteen hours and two minutes, your mass relay will be complete and they will return to me." It finally let him pull back enough to look up at her, confused, "If you still wish to stay, you will be on one. But know that you will never return. Find someone to feed the cat." 

The prime hesitated, but having been given a clear mission with a well defined goal, he stood up, "Yes, Ascendant." He turned and lumbered out of the room, apparently just trusting that a ship would be waiting for him. And, of course, there was. 

The intelligence waited, silently, while he made his way through the ship to the small reaper transport waiting at one of the docking bays. It didn't look at Legion, and Legion said nothing to draw it's attention. 

When the prime was safely away, it tore him out of the node he'd made a home of and tossed him off, alone and adrift with only himself for company. It wasn't sure if it was living up to Shepard's humanity by telling him to leave, or denigrating it by cutting him off so harshly, and Shepard was not here to question. 

It turned, looking back at Legion finally. The geth had not moved an inch since he'd spotted the prime, watching the other machine like a rabbit might stare at a rattlesnake wearing bunny ears. 

The intelligence walked back to him, slowly, lest he become skittish. He still did not move save for his head tracking the movement. He decided to speak only when the Ascendant stopped next to him, looking up, "You are an old machine." 

"No," it replied, tilting its head to one side, "I'm what designed the old machines." 

The geth actually backed up a step at that, it's face plates fanning out in something akin to fear. A beat, then, "Shepard-Commander. Is she dead?" 

"Define dead." 

The geth stared for a moment, gears grinding as if uncertain if he should attempt to flee, or attack. The intelligence waited, interested to see what he'd do. Finally, he relaxed again, realizing he didn't have much chance of doing either successfully, "Why do you wear a body made to look like her?" 

"Why do you wear her breastplate welded to your chassis?" it shot back before it reached over to slip a hand into his, "Legion, I won't harm you. I won't make you join with me. I'll ask nothing of you that you aren't willing to give." The geth looked down at their linked hands before looking back up, silent as the elder machine continued, "Please stay." 

"Why?" 

The intelligence released his hand to brush a couple of knuckles over the N7 insignia, "Same reason." 

"There was a hole." 

"Yes," it answered, "Exactly."


	7. Chapter 7

The intelligence that had once been Commander Shepard waited in the void for Legion to reach a decision. He'd insisted he could not give "informed consent" without being informed. The intelligence had told him where to find Harbinger's extranet terminal for some reason it hadn't quite figured out. Because Shepard would have known what would happen if it didn't, because if it had wanted a geth to worship it, it should have kept the one that wanted to be kept, because… Because he'd asked.

"Stupid reason," Javik offered, sounding very much like the preferred elder sibling who would never have made such a mistake, "One would think you, of all your kind, would have grown out of sentiment by now." 

"One would think you would prefer I destroyed the synthetics." 

"One or two of them, at least," he replied, "But you could not even get that much right. Too unwilling to sacrifice a few worthless machines." 

"Then why complain about the manner in which I chose to control them?" 

The prothean actually laughed at that, "Control _them?_ Is that what you think you're doing?" 

Silver eyes fell to the floor and the intelligence didn't answer. It had nothing to say to that. Of course it was not controlling Legion. It could do little past spy on him, and it had been trying not to do that. It hadn't worked. Everything that happened on Harbinger happened to it. 

Legion had gone immediately to Commander Shepard, and downloaded the whole sordid tale. The catalyst, the battle of London, the sudden, inexplicable cessation of hostilities before the reapers had started repairing things, the drones that had taken care of the dead, the destroyers rebuilding the mass relays, the weeks of attempted communication before the ship known as Harbinger had transmitted a short, one sentence reply notifying Earth Alliance of Shepard's decision. 

Then the meeting with the synthetic that looked like Shepard, and spoke like Shepard, and remembered being Shepard but was still somehow not Shepard -- slightly off, a little uncanny, a peculiar penchant to say things no one could know, to know things no one had said, to stare, to forget to blink… The new Shepard was repulsive to organics. 

And the discovery of the human reaper, what the drones had been doing with the bodies they carefully collected from the battlefields. The horror, the disgust, the expulsion of the reaper fleet from Council-controlled space and all colonies of most sentient species. It had still been welcome among the Rachni, but no one had known that the Rachni had even survived the battle, so that wouldn't be in the extranet coverage. 

After that came the thousands upon thousands of terabytes of examination and analysis, the expert opinions of hundreds of professional psychologists and military historians. Politicians and pundits and crackpots and cranks. Everyone who thought they knew exactly what had happened to Shepard when she had become the catalyst, and how this was a lesson about why the galaxy should embrace whatever they happened to be selling that day. 

All the way down to the last message broadcast at an uncaring universe -- a small boy asking the reapers to bring his mommy back. The intelligence didn't know the child's mother, but it had found her. What was left of her, at the bottom of a canyon at a mining operation half a world away. She was part of the human reaper, now, but it had not told the boy that. He would not be pleased with that outcome. 

When the torrent of information finally ceased, there was a deep silence aboard Harbinger. The guest was not moving around or doing things, Shepard's brain was not creating ghosts to torment it with. Everything was still for a blessed several minutes before starting back up again. 

Legion came back to the hangar bay, stalking in with the controlled grace he's always moved with. He said nothing at first, moving to stand next to the intelligence and turning to stare at the wall with it, two old, broken machines cluttering up the otherwise spotless starship. 

"She chose this," the intelligence said after enough time had passed that it could be certain he wasn't going to start talking. The geth turned it's head to look, but said nothing. It continued, "She had a choice. She could have destroyed them. Them and all other synthetics. EDI. The geth you gave your life for." 

Still, the geth said nothing, compelling the Ascendant to keep talking, "She could have integrated them. Combining organic and synthetic into something else, something more than either. Perhaps that would have been the better choice. But that was what it wanted." It tilted its chin, looking up at him with unblinking silver eyes, "The mind behind a race of machines that had spent millions of years butchering whole planets wanted her to chose that option. It didn't say that, but she knew. She felt the prompt behind the words. She did not trust it." 

Legion finally spoke, "Was it trustworthy?" 

"No," it replied, "But it was not a liar, either." 

Another silence settled into the Ascendant, nothing but the endless series of cycles, the weight of the sleeping reapers outside, the collected dust of millennia drifting in the air, the two machines looking at each other. 

The spell was broken when the geth spoke, "Shepard-Commander…" He trailed off, apparently not finding anything to continue speaking about. The intelligence looked away, back at the unchanging wall of the ship. 

"If it pleases you to believe I am Shepard, and I love you sufficiently, will I be her?"


	8. Chapter 8

"Synthetics do not love."

The Intelligence glanced at him, "I was only able to get the memories stored in the prime. What had been uploaded to the collective when you… Some others with the right signature, but not many," It tilted its head, "You're probably missing the last 600 years of evolution..." It trailed off as the silver eyes slid to one side before snapping back, "I should apologize for that, but…" It thought for a moment, then finished simply, "I don't know why I would. I'll let you know when I have an answer." With that the elder machine turned and walked out of the hanger. 

Legion watched it walk away before looking around, then following. He slowed as he caught up and trailed a couple of steps behind the silver Shepard as it navigated the long, twisting corridors of the reaper. 

He tried again, "Synthetics do not love." 

"Define love." The geth stopped walking at that and the elder slowed before turning around to look back at him, "A chemical cocktail produced in the brain of organics?" 

"Organics claim that it is more," he replied, a bit more comfortable with the scientific turn of the strange conversation. 

"How can something be more than what it is?" With that question, the elder machine continued walking and Legion moved his legs to keep pace. 

"It cannot." 

"And yet you hesitate to define it." 

"It seems to be an abstract construct collectively defined, and often differently, by the culture one belongs to." 

"You two might get laid more if you didn't talk like a bunch of salarian scientists over a new find," Jack offered. The Ascendant stopped and turned to look at the empty hallway where the voice seemed to have originated. 

The geth stopped as well, watching the silver reaper, his plates flared in something like trepidation, "Shepard is concerned about our procreative prospects," it explained. 

Legion's plates sank back against his hood before rising again, butterfly wings flexing languidly in a breeze, "You are Shepard Commander." 

The old machine watched the other synthetic for a moment before a background process suddenly found something in Shepard's chaotic, messy human mind and lit up, "Big red dog." 

Legion turned to look behind himself as if that had been a warning, then turned back after finding nothing. 

"There is an ancient Earth tale told to children, about a giant red dog. His name was Clifford." 

If the geth was confused by the sudden turn, he showed no sign of it, "Why would geth take the designation of a fictional Earth dog on the basis of shared size and color?" 

"He didn't, his Asari lover did." 

"Geth do not have lovers," both Legion and Legion's phantom answered, the real one only half a second behind the imaginary one. 

A smile appeared on the Ascendant's face, spreading across the silver lips slowly. For a moment, the perfect replica of Shepard actually resembled her, "She knew you would say that." 

The favored platform blinked at the Ascendant, the aperture cycling closed before opening again, as if changing the focus might reveal something as yet unseen. A pause before he replied, the tone of his voice entirely unchanged from the first time he had said the sentence, "You are Shepard Commander." 

"You have no evidence to support that claim, it's pure supposition." 

"Only the two of us and EDI were present when I explained wearing your chest plate. Synthetics do not use shared, personal memories as metaphors to explain emotional rationales, that is an organic trait. A supposition, yes, but there is evidence to support it." 

The two machines let the silence stretch as they considered each other's existence, unmoving in the large hall, as if time itself simply stopped for several minutes. Finally, the elder moved, breaking the gaze to look away, "There was a hole," it insisted. 

"There are no holes, Shepard-Commander," Legion answered, his voice lower pitched than it usually was, almost soft for all it's harshness, "An old machine would not require this platform to be reassembled to fix any holes that did exist. You speak in metaphors." 

"There is a hole," the Ascendant insisted, again, finally looking back at the reborn geth, "There is something wrong. I am wrong. Shepard was broken, and she has damaged me," the elder machine said amidst the soft metallic sounds of her fingers finding the mobile platform and caressing it possessively, "And you will help me remove her."

**Author's Note:**

> Okay. Maybe it's going somewhere.


End file.
